The Reynolds Center has announced its 2008 fall workshop schedule.
Select a workshop and register from the drop-down menu below.
The Reynolds Center has opened registration for select 2008 free online seminars.
Topics include:
*Intermediate Business Journalism
*Covering Private Companies
*Business Journalism Boot Camp
Thursday is when my week really gets interesting as the other business editors and I juggle daily and weekend stories.
This week is more challenging than usual: We have the Sunday Page One centerpiece, the Sunday Business section and the Friday Business section to go over today. I also spent time working with reporters and a managing editor on two projects that should land fairly soon.
It was another newsy day. State economists announced that the Oregon unemployment rate dropped from 7.7 percent in January to 7.1 percent in February, and they declared the state's recession "likely over."
The Sunday Page One centerpiece is an in-depth analysis of the business practices at the Portland-area Goodwill, which has drawn attention both for its innovative practices and its corporate-style executive pay and benefits. It's a complicated story we've worked on for several months. Economy Editor Ben Santarris has directed the project. The Business centerpiece, which I edited, is on the economic growth spurred in one Oregon community by a world-class golf course.
Santarris also edited the daily Page One unemployment story. It's an important story that's not as simple as it seems. We want to convey the sense that a very difficult period in Oregon's history is probably over, while acknowledging that many individuals still are in dire economic straits. The AFL-CIO staged a press conference to draw attention to the second point. We had to keep the story focused on facts, rather than political opinions. Gail Hill, who's been The Oregonian's lead economy reporter throughout the recession, did an excellent job of keeping the story balanced — between both opposing viewpoints and the numbers are real-life circumstances.
A related story was the Business page centerpiece: Four area companies formed a consortium that they hope will land a big bridge project in San Francisco and create 300 jobs in the Portland area. The story was written by a reporter in the Clark County, Wash., bureau.
We led the section with the stock market story. Generally, we prefer to lead with a local story, but the key is "local relevance," not who wrote the story. We don't have enough staff to duplicate the wire market stories and routine national economy stories, but we don't want to penalize readers by favoring staff-written stories over important wire stories. After the Dow dropped almost 330 points in two days, it needed big play. (We didn't put the market on our cover Thursday, as many sections did.)
Downpage, we had a story that created a lot of discussion in the newsroom: Hooters is opening its first Portland-area restaurant. Some argued it was a symbolic story worthy of a centerpiece; others thought we shouldn't cover the opening at all. The challenge here was obvious: to write a story that made it clear why that mattered. In Portland, whose land-use and zoning laws are legendary, the arrival of this controversial chain was a natural "talk point" story -- but not a centerpiece topic. Part of the story focused on why there was less opposition to the restaurant opening than one might expect here.
Our fourth cover story was on the House's vote on the broadcast indecency fines we wrote about Thursday. We used wire because the D.C. bureau reporter who did the Thursday story was chasing a much bigger story - the alleged spy activities of a former press secretary for two Oregon congressional members.
It's been a busy week, but I'm proud of the sections we've put out.Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism
